Remember that this execution (assassination) of Saddam Hussein was carried out by the U.S. installed government in Iraq while the U.S. is illegally occupying Iraq. The U.S. had physical control of Saddam up until the time of his execution and transported the body afterwards. Simply put, Saddam Hussein was executed by the U.S. government. It is also important to remember that the U.S. illegally invaded Iraq and is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. –Ayinde

On the Gallows, Saddam Curses U.S. and ‘Traitors’
By Marc Santora, NY Times
BAGHDAD, Dec. 30 — Saddam Hussein never bowed his head, until his neck snapped. His last words were equally defiant. “Down with the traitors, the Americans, the spies and the Persians.”

Robert Fisk: He takes his secrets to the grave. Our complicity dies with him
How the West armed Saddam, fed him intelligence on his ‘enemies’, equipped him for atrocities – and then made sure he wouldn’t squeal

We’ve shut him up. The moment Saddam’s hooded executioner pulled the lever of the trapdoor in Baghdad yesterday morning, Washington’s secrets were safe. The shameless, outrageous, covert military support which the United States – and Britain – gave to Saddam for more than a decade remains the one terrible story which our presidents and prime ministers do not want the world to remember. And now Saddam, who knew the full extent of that Western support – given to him while he was perpetrating some of the worst atrocities since the Second World War – is dead.
Full Article : independent.co.uk

Robert Parry: Bush Silences a Dangerous Witness
Like a blue-blood version of a Mob family with global reach, the Bushes have eliminated one more key witness to the important historical events that led the U.S. military into a bloody stalemate in Iraq and pushed the Middle East to the brink of calamity.

“But now with nearly 3,000 American soldiers killed and the Iraqi death toll exceeding 600,000 by some estimates, Bush may be forced to savor the image of Hussein dangling at the end of a rope a little more privately.

Still, Bush has done his family’s legacy a great service while also protecting secrets that could have embarrassed other senior U.S. government officials.

He has silenced a unique witness to crucial chapters of the secret history that stretched from Iran’s Islamic revolution in 1979 to the alleged American-Saudi “green light” for Hussein to attack Iran in 1980, through the eight years of the Iran-Iraq War during which high-ranking U.S. intermediaries, such as Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates, allegedly helped broker supplies of war materiel for Hussein.”
Full Article : consortiumnews.com

Hold these grotesque executioners to account
By Iain Macwhirter
Stop all the clocks. He is dead. Saddam Hussein had a rather good death, and dictators shouldn’t have good deaths. He went to the gallows in dignity, holding the Koran, urging reconciliation, his head uncovered amid his captors’ balaclavas.

The grotesque exercise turned a brutal tyrant into something like a martyr, a victim of a victor’s justice. After what Human Rights Watch called a “trial by ambush”, because of the conduct of the defence and the rush to judgment, the execution was overhasty too, as if his captors felt they had to dispatch him before 2006 was out. Was this intended as a kind of new year message from George W Bush? For Auld Lang Syne?

The execution of Saddam may have brought “closure” to the White House, but it left a bitter taste in the mouths of the rest of us. He was executed under the auspices of an Anglo-American occupation that has brought little but death and destruction to Iraq. Even members of the Iraq Study Group in the US Senate accept that the people of Iraq are probably worse off now than under Saddam.

So, who is going to hold the executioners to account?
Full Article : sundayherald.com

Now Saddam’s Accomplices

Where Were the Mass Graves?

Saddam’s Hanging Verdict Is Illegal And Unjust

Saddam told them to ‘go to hell’
“Executions are generally expected to be solemn affairs –- certainly not opportunities for thugs to score some final sectarian points before the “enemy” is disposed of. The video itself seems quite distasteful –- but it is informative to the extent that it reveals the political baggage that the current government carries on its shoulders. It does not add up to a pretty picture.”

Saddam buried in his home village
Relatives of the former Iraqi president say Saddam Hussein has been buried in a family plot in Awja, close to Tikrit.

An earlier family statement issued on Saturday night said the executed leader would be buried in Ramadi, but the authorities there said they were unaware of any plan to bury him there.

December 30, 2006

BBC – Saddam Hussein executed in Iraq (with Iraqi TV images)

Saddam Hussein ‘executed in Iraq’
Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has been executed by hanging at an unspecified location, reports say. Iraqi TV said the execution took place just before 0600 local time (0300GMT). It was witnessed by a doctor, lawyer and officials. It was also filmed.

Saddam Hussein was hanged just before 10 p.m. EST.

It’s a hornet’s nest. But I’m game. So why not jump in.
“Bush administration officials” are telling CNN that Saddam Hussein will be hanged this weekend. Convention dictates that we precede any discussion of this execution with the obligatory nod to Saddam’s treachery, bloodthirsty rule and tyranny. But enough of the cowardly chatter. This thing is a sham, of a piece with the whole corrupt, disastrous sham that the war and occupation have been. Bush administration officials are the ones who leak the news about the time of the execution. One key reason we know Saddam’s about to be executed is that he’s about to be transferred from US to Iraqi custody, which tells you a lot. And, of course, the verdict in his trial gets timed to coincide with the US elections.

Arab haj pilgrims outraged at Saddam execution

Taliban says Saddam’s execution to intensify jihad

The Execution of Saddam Hussein
By the Editorial Board, wsws.org
December 30 2006
The execution of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein serves not justice, but the political purposes of the Bush administration and its Iraqi stooges. The manner in which the execution was carried out—hurriedly, secretively, in the dark of night, in a mockery of any semblance of legal process–only underscores the lawless and reactionary character of the entire American enterprise in Iraq.

There were conflicting statements throughout Friday about how and under what circumstances the death sentence against Hussein, confirmed by an Iraqi government tribunal December 26, would be carried out. There were continual communications back and forth between the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, which nominally controlled the judicial proceedings, and the American military authorities who had physical control of the prisoner and delivered him to the execution site in the US-controlled Green Zone.